I think it was 1996, or maybe 1997, when I first got online. My first website was built with free space given away by the isp I used at the time. Then I discovered Geocities. I'm probably old-fashioned, but I think that Geocities as it was then was far better than it was at the end. It was genuinely run by the people for the people. To begin with, when you signed up, you chose a "residence" in an area geared to your main interest. Each neighbourhood was then split into streets and the individual sites, called homesteads, had house numbers. It was fun choosing a number that meant something. In fact, I held onto the first site I got there, geocities.com/Wellesley/3770/ until the bitter end. I chose it because I was 37 years old at the time; so that would have been in 1998.

After a while, I got a site in Paris and really enjoyed my time there. So much so that I was asked to be a Neighbourhood Guide, a role I took very seriously. The Guides' duties were to look after a given stretch of websites, to make sure that the content was acceptable, no porn or sites that could incite unpleasantness. Every sunday I would "patrol" my stretch, checking the sites for content, and signing their guestbooks with a cheery message. We had to report back to our leader regularly with the results and we were encouraged to offer help if a homesteader was obviously having problems. We had a forum where we had weekly meetings to chat and discuss the running of Geocities. We were rewarded by extra space, but it was more for the pride of being able to help that drove us. We were genuine people, trying to make a difference. In the end, money took over and Geocities scaled their neighbourhood guide scheme to a minimum. The changes were too much and most of us left voluntarily before we were asked to go. The senior people did their best, but the people behind Geocities did not want us there anymore and the site became just a mass of adverts. I know that it was important that the people who owned the companies made some money. But in the process, they took the heart out and forgot to replace it. There were lots of other free webspace companies opening up, and yet Geocities took away the only things that made it different and worthwhile.

I have found two versions of my Wellesley site in the Internet Archive. I seem to remember at least three other versions: a basic early one, one called "The Lighthouse Keeper", and one called "White Bird", after a song I particularly liked. After that, the site became "Peroriaeth" as that was the username I had chosen when I signed up. In 1999 my sister gave me the domain Serennau.co.uk as a birthday present. For a while it pointed to my Geocities site, but then I moved it to paid hosting, I used the Wellesley3770 space for a site named "Cameo". That site was about the internet, domains, hosting and all that kind of thing. Geocities closed down completely shortly after that.